


to match the pace of the universe

by kickedshins



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Could Be Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Jemma Simmons-centric, Post-Episode: s01e20 Nothing Personal, Sharing a Bed, its not really that angsty more introspective, technically During Episode but like during and after the very end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29872665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: Jemma thinks, distantly, of a time when they were seventeen and still at the start of the most important friendship she’s ever had or ever will have, and Fitz was telling her about torque. She doesn’t know why it came up, and she doesn’t know what the conversation led to. But she can remember sitting on Fitz’s bed and wearing Fitz’s hoodie and watching Fitz’s face light up as he rambled on about some basic principle of physics or another, listening to the thick ck sound at the end of torque and the way it fell off of his tongue, feeling his blankets underneath her bitten-down fingernails, thinking that maybe this was the sort of thing that was supposed to last forever. Maybe this moment was one that would never end. Maybe he’d spin his hands around, demonstrating orbital angular velocity, and he’d bring her with her, and they’d make their own impenetrable rotational field, or whatever it was that he was telling her about.There’s something out there, probably, that has a stronger gravitational pull than the earth. Jemma thinks, now, that she could find it with him.orJemma Simmons tries her best to decompress by talking to Skye and Fitz after the team gets betrayed.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	to match the pace of the universe

**Author's Note:**

> um. so. i wanted to write 3k words of fitzsimmons sharing a bed and well. This fell out. so yeah it takes place at the end of s1e20 (there is one brief moment that has canon dialogue from the episode, goes from "must be some reason" to "you'll never have to find out") and then after the episode/before e21. simmons has two hands. enjoy!

Jemma puts herself in charge of assigning people to one of the two rooms the team has booked at this inconspicuous motel. It’s something little, something simple, but it’s something to control, and it’s a way to cement herself in the present. She needs to think that she has a handle on at least one aspect of her life right now.

“Alright,” she says to the group once she’s distributed room keys. “I chatted with the woman at the front desk and she says that there are a few half-decent food options around, as well as a vending machine located outside. I think it’s for the best if we stay within the confines of this motel, avoid the risk of being shot at and/or arrested if we attempt to leave for a proper meal, and resign ourselves to a dinner of crisps and sweets, don’t you all?”

Coulson nods his assent. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to risk the exposure that going to a restaurant might give us. Load up on Doritos and those, uh, Texas Cinnamon Rolls. Those are my favorites.”

“I’m sure we can scrape together a balanced meal,” Skye says, voice just a little too hoarse to properly keep her tone as buoyant with levity as she clearly hopes it might be. “Those rolls have carbs, fats, dairy in the icing… I’m sure there’s some strawberry-flavored candy lying around somewhere, right? Fruits, hell yeah. This is some five-star shit right here.”

Jemma’s toe beats an anxious patter against the floor. There’s some pretty terrible carpeting that muffles the sound. She says, “As long as we’re running on something other than pure fumes tomorrow, I’ll be happy. I’m sure none of you want a lecture about what going too long without any sort of food—or, worse, water, you all must remember to drink water—does to your body.”

“I have heard this rant quite a few times,” Fitz puts in, raising his hand. “Often in quite hypocritical circumstances. This girl skipped lunch to do research far too much when we were in the Academy together.”

Jemma shoots him an admonishing look. She doesn’t want him disrupting this put-together persona she’s trying too hard to project right now. “I did not _skip_ , Fitz, I merely got caught up in my work and forgot to fetch myself a meal. And, besides, those in glass houses—”

“Hey, you threw the first stone,” he says, putting his hands up in a gesture that’s half-surrender and half-self-defense. He’s smiling, though, and she gives him a friendly, private half-eyeroll before turning back to the group at large.

Jemma claps her hands together and hopes that the sound is loud enough to hide the low, humming whine of her terror; she plasters a smile across her face and hopes the white of her teeth blind the others from seeing the fear reflected in her eyes. She says, “We’d better get a good night’s sleep tonight.”

There’s the collective sound of _come on, Simmons, really, don’t mother-hen us, don’t be absurdly idealistic_ coming from everyone who isn’t Triplett, who has not known Simmons for long enough to be exasperated with her in a way that expresses affection. Even Fitz can’t seem to hold back. That’s alright, though, because of course she knows no one is sleeping easily tonight. Of course she’s not stupid enough to think that anyone is going to be able to rest. It’s still a nicety that should be verbalized, though, and if no one else is going to verbalize it, she’s more than alright with bearing that cross.

The group splinters off, with most of them wandering about outside and Coulson staying back to check out the rooms beforehand, just in case, and to talk to Hill afterward. Because, Christ, Maria Hill is lurking around outside somewhere, and she’s not planning on staying, so she didn’t get a room key, but still. Jemma is slightly jealous of Coulson getting to have a one-on-one chat with her. She’s also slightly terrified for him. Hill is intimidating, to say the least.

Also, Coulson insists May will be back, and Jemma thinks maybe he’s scouting around to check if his suspicions were correct or not. Maybe he’s looking to see if she’s shown up, if she’s waiting for him in the dark, if she has something to say.

Jemma hopes he was right. They paid for a room key for May. It would be a shame if Coulson were to get a room all to himself and Skye, Fitz, and Jemma had to fit their three bodies into a room with just two beds for nothing. 

To be fair, Jemma would be hard-pressed to be separated from Fitz, and she wants to stick close to Skye just in case she was injured during her time alone with Ward and simply isn’t admitting it. Also, she’s gotten accustomed to being by Skye’s bedside while Skye was recovering from being shot, and it feels a bit strange to think about anyone else holding her place. So she wouldn’t really be all that upset if it did turn out that the three of them shared a room when they didn’t exactly need to.

The largest reason Jemma has for wanting Coulson to be right about May is that, quite simply, Jemma misses her. Jemma wants the team to be okay. She wants the cavalry back.

Fitz goes over to the vending machine out by the pool to get something to eat. Triplett, who is also not staying the night at the motel, because his mother lives nearby, apparently, and has some interesting old tech, apparently, and he thinks it’d be best if he stayed over at her place, apparently, is close behind.

Jemma sorely does not want to be privy to Fitz being an ass for no reason to Triplett yet again (seriously, she loves Fitz, but what is his problem with this very good-hearted, very attractive man? Jemma, for her part, has had a fantastic time getting to know him.), so she trails after Skye like a puppy half-dreading and half-wanting to be kicked. She wants to talk to someone, anyone, but she doesn’t want to add panic to a situation, and she’s so very worried that she might say something to Skye to upset her. Still, Skye lets Jemma walk in silence a few steps behind her as the two of them wander around the pool area.

Finally, Skye says, “Do you wanna ask me something, or…?”

Jemma shakes her head, and then realizes that Skye, with her eyes eternally set to the horizon, can’t see Jemma. She takes a few small, rapid steps forward, lands at Skye’s left side, and says, “No. I just wanted to… I don’t know, make sure you were alright?”

Skye pauses her ambling. She takes a deep breath, and when she lets it out, Jemma thinks she can almost see Skye’s exhaustion filtering through the air like breath through a wintertime night, condensing into physical droplets of water vapor and weariness. She runs a hand through her hair, visibly bumping up against a few knots in it, and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Okay,” Jemma says. “You don’t have to be okay.”

Skye’s smile is tired and true. “I am, though,” she says. “I mean, I might not be in a few days, when I’m running on something other than adrenaline and when this all hits me like a motherfucking bullet to the stomach—”

Jemma winces. She has no clue how Skye can be so blithe about death. At her discomfort, Skye laughs a bit, and says, “Well, two bullets, I guess. I’m not gonna not acknowledge what happened to me, Simmons, even if it’s just by joking about it at first.”

“That’s a double negative,” Jemma says, because she’s the worst and she can’t help herself sometimes.

“That’s a doub—” Skye starts to mock, but then stops herself. She tries to tug her fingers through her hair again. The attempt is a bit more successful this time. She says, “Hey, we’re buddies. We match. I fell outta the sky, too.”

Jemma is impressed with herself for not letting her mouth drop open. She says, “You what.”

“Fell outta the sky,” Skye repeats. “With Coulson and in Lola, though, and Lola can apparently kinda fly, or hover, or something, so. Wasn’t raw-dogging a freefall like you did.”

“You are a wordsmith,” Jemma says delicately.

Skye cuts her eyes sideways to Jemma. They’re liquid in the moonlight, a deep brown that Jemma’s finding herself more than a little lost in. Skye’s lips twitch up, and something in her expression says _thank you_.

Jemma isn’t sure why Skye is thankful, or honestly if she even is thankful at all. Jemma doesn’t want to be making wild assumptions based on something as confusing and subtle as the facial expressions of a woman she just met a few months ago.

Then again, Skye is a strangely open book, even if she very much is trying hard not to be. Jemma knows trying to keep yourself unreadable. Jemma’s very practiced in it. Skye makes a valiant attempt, but there is something a little too good in her heart, a little too cushiony and soft. Skye wears it on her sleeve, and maybe it’s a sleeve made of chainmail or armor, but it’s her sleeve nonetheless. 

Skye starts walking again, slower this time. Jemma falls into step beside her, and for once, she feels like they’re walking in tandem. Skye says, “Are you okay, too?”

“I’m more than alright,” Jemma says, waving her off. “Honestly, I’m concerned primarily about you. And about Fitz. He’s… upset.”

Skye makes a _pfft_ sound, part affectionate and part resigned. “Yeah. He’s big on believing in the good of people, isn’t he.”

“He’s big on believing in friendship,” Jemma says, which sounds fantastically five-year-old and absurd the second it leaves her mouth, but Skye seems to get it.

“Betrayal sucks,” Skye says, and then she tilts her head back, hair falling like a rockslide down her shoulders, and says it louder, stronger, with more conviction, as if Jemma wasn’t already utterly entranced by her the first time. “Betrayal sucks!” She announces it to the dark near-midnight, to the stars shining above, to the universe that stretches on forever and ever and ever around them.

Physics isn’t Jemma’s strong suit, but she knows that the common theory is that the universe is infinitely expanding. She takes some amazement in this. She is so small, and everything is so big, and yet Skye’s shout makes itself take up almost as much space as every piece of stardust that has ever existed combined. Skye’s voice, Skye’s presence, everything about Skye seems to match the pace of the universe. Seems to race it for who can grow biggest the fastest.

Skye seems to come back into herself, and for a second, she looks almost embarrassed to be letting Jemma see her at her rawest. Jemma understands. It’s excruciating every time she opens up to Skye. Jemma really hasn’t been opening up to people who aren’t Fitz in a tangible way in as long as she can remember.

Still, it’s rewarding. It’s terrifying and comforting all at once to be known. Love is like the universe in that way, she supposes. Terrifying and comforting in its size. Terrifying and comforting in its mysteries.

Skye gives Jemma a cut-open, lopsided grin, and Jemma thinks, _I am such a fraud_. Skye is a rubber ball, brightly colored and always bouncing back. Her smiles are real, and her emotions are, too, and Jemma is not like her. Jemma has plastered these walls tightly, and she will not let her casing crack. Jemma sometimes doesn’t know if she’s deserving of the affection Skye seems so desperately to want to give her. Jemma often doesn’t know why Skye seems to like her so much.

She should comfort Skye; that’s what this situation calls for. Jemma says, “Yeah. Betrayal sucks. I’m sorry, Skye, I know you—”

“It’s fine,” Skye says, waving her off. “Fuck, I should have bit off his tongue when it was in my mouth.”

“Um,” Jemma says, because there is not really any good way to respond to that.

“I’m being dramatic,” Skye tells her. “Anyway, are you headed anywhere?”

“Er, no. I was just following you, to be honest. You were walking like a girl with purpose.”

“With purpose,” Skye repeats. “Yeah, no. I was just moving to move, you know? I mean, I’m gonna take a few more laps around the pool, so you’re welcome to come with. I’d offer to walk around outside with you—like, _outside_ outside, outside the gates of this motel—but I feel like that’s probably not the safest thing to do on about ten different levels. Like, the fact that we’re two women walking alone at night aside—which, okay, I do think I kick serious ass at this point, but still—there’s the whole _we work for something that has now been declared a terrorist organization and oh yeah actual literal fucking Nazis are out to get us_ situation. All things considered, I feel like Coulson would rather us stay here. And I, for once in my life, don’t feel partial towards disobeying authority.” 

“The world really is turning on its head,” Jemma says solemnly.

Skye’s laugh splits the dark of the cold air and blankets Jemma head to toe in a layer of warmth. Jemma wants to hear that sound again and again.

Skye loops her arm through Jemma’s. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get out of earshot of whatever’s going on over there.” She gestures to the far side of the pool, where Fitz and Triplett appear to be in the most one-sided of arguments that Jemma has ever seen. Fitz’s body (the language of which Jemma can feel like a well-worn and often-read book of the poetry of the greats) is screaming _fuck all the way off,_ and Triplett is either not getting the hint or just isn’t that intimidated by a five-foot-eight science nerd who isn’t cleared for combat. In fact, Triplett is, if Jemma’s eyesight and people-reading serves her correctly, offering to buy a soda from the vending machine for Fitz, who cannot find the wallet that he is patting his body to locate.

“I don’t get it,” Jemma murmurs. “Triplett is a lovely man.”

Skye shoots her an indecipherable look. “He is,” she agrees. “Maybe it’s just Fitz’s whole _not really being a people person_ thing acting up. Who knows. I certainly don’t.”

“Fitz is not a people person, true,” Jemma agrees. “E-except for that he is? I mean, he is, but he also isn’t. It’s– he enjoys talking to people, but– sorry, this isn’t the point. Fitz is just—” 

She cuts herself off in frustration. It’s hard to describe Fitz. It’s hard to describe her feelings for Fitz. It’s hard to describe how well she understands them. And it’s particularly hard to describe those feelings to anyone who isn’t herself or, well, Fitz. But it’s not as if she talks to Fitz about this sort of thing, so really it’s just that it’s difficult to verbalize what she wants to say. The thoughts exist in her head (that Fitz is not a contradictory person, just a person with more depth than people often think he has, that sometimes even she doesn’t get him and sometimes even he doesn’t get her, but that that’s alright, because nothing intrigues a scientifically-inclined mind more than discovery, that Jemma’s friendship with Fitz is a ten-year-long study whose thesis she is still figuring out but whose conclusion, she knows, will do nothing short of reveal at least one intrinsic truth about the universe), but she can’t figure out how to put them into the proper words.

It doesn’t matter. She says, “Regardless, Fitz isn’t a misanthrope, nor is he particularly prone to antagonizing. Antagonizing people he’s just met, I mean. Goodness knows he’s– whatever,” she says, a little bit flustered by how easy it is to get sidetracked by Fitz without him even being there. “I digress. I just mean that I simply—” and here she pauses, because she hates admitting things like this “—do not understand what his problem is!”

Skye studies Jemma as if she’s a thing worth studying, which Jemma usually takes great precautions to ensure she is not. “Perhaps he’s getting territorial,” Skye says. “You know. Like a dog. A poodle, or something, with the hair and all.”

“Territorial?” Jemma asks.

Skye rolls her eyes. It’s the sort of gesture that Jemma has trouble figuring out, especially when it comes from Skye. She can’t tell if it’s sarcastic or affectionate or cruel or somewhere in between, and things aren’t made any more clear by Skye saying, “Whatever. Hey, do you think I can find something to kick the shit out of so that I can get my aggression out?”

“I thought you said you were fine,” Jemma says. She bumps her hip lightly against Skye’s teasingly, because it feels like the right thing to do. 

“Lies upon lies upon lies,” Skye says melodramatically. “Whatcha gonna do?”

“Truth seems like an apt remedy.”

“Truth seems hard,” Skye whines, pouting like a five-year-old. She quickly straightens her shoulders and smiles at Jemma in a way that lets her know that her actions were intentionally over-the-top. She says, “Really, though, I’m fine. I knew what I had to do to keep myself alive, and I did it. And, hey!” She drops Jemma’s arm and throws her hands up in the air. “I’m alive!”

“I know,” Jemma says. “And, sincerely, thank goodness for that.” 

“Thank quick thinking, more like.”

Jemma doesn’t want to keep bothering Skye about the same subject, but they seem to be talking in the same sort of circles they’re walking in, so she says, to the point, “Skye, you had feelings for a man who then revealed himself to be a HYDRA agent. A Nazi. You _kissed_ a man who then revealed himself to be a Nazi. I would be shocked if you _didn’t_ feel immensely disturbed by that.”

Skye takes a shuddering breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I am immensely disturbed by that. I’m gonna be fine, though,” she says, low and insistent and trying to convince someone other than Jemma. “I’ve gone through worse shit. Hell, in the past few weeks alone I’ve gone through worse shit. He was, at least, a decent kisser, so. Wasn’t like I was suffering while it was happening, or anything.”

“Good to know he has a sole redeeming quality,” Jemma says dryly.

“By decent, I mean, like, five-point-seven-five-outta-ten level decent.”

“Then again, maybe he doesn’t.”

Skye laughs again, and Jemma feels that rush of warmth again, and she thinks that maybe Skye will be alright. Maybe she will, too. It’s at least very easy to pretend that that’s a possibility when Jemma can see each of Skye’s individual lashes and can feel the warmth of Skye’s fingertips brush against the flat of Jemma’s wrist.

Skye’s thumb rests on the jutting-out of bone that outlines Jemma’s arm. It’s a light touch, but an intimate one. She says, “Thanks, by the way.”

“What for?” Jemma asks.

“I dunno,” Skye says. Her thumb taps against Jemma’s skin, a code that seems to spell out _I’m here, and isn’t that wonderful for you and me both?_ “Everything, I guess.”

“Skye—”

“Don’t,” Skye insists. “Let’s not turn this into a feelings-fest, okay?”

“I wasn’t planning on doing that,” Jemma says truthfully. “I just was going to say you’re welcome, and thank you, too, and that we can walk in silence a bit, if that’s what you’d prefer.”

“I think it is,” Skye says.

It’s apparently not, though, because the silence only lasts for about half a minute. Skye is one of those people who acts as if she’ll die if she doesn’t speak as much as possible. Jemma doesn’t understand her, but she likes the sound of her voice, so she’s not complaining. She’s content to walk next to Skye, happy in her company, listening to her talk about something—some software process, maybe? Something about computers?—that seems leagues away from the situation they’ve all somehow found themselves caught in.

Skye interrupts her own stream of mindless chatter by pointing at the vending machine. Triplett is still standing there. Fitz is not. Skye points out, rather obviously, “Fitz is gone.”

Jemma is not proud of how quickly she enters panic mode. Her heart rate falls back to regularity when, a second later, Fitz walks around the corner of the motel and waves at her from afar.

She waves back, smiling to herself in a bitten-off way. It’s the type of smile she likes to keep half in her mouth so that she can taste it.

“Fitz is back,” Skye notes, monotone. “You wanna talk to him? Because I’m headed elsewhere. I need to eat. And there’s a vending machine with my name on it and a very attractive, very nice, very much not-a-Nazi man still standing by it who might offer to buy me something if I ask real sweet. Or, hey, if you do.”

“If I do?” Jemma says, but Skye doesn’t elaborate further.

Skye pulls Jemma into a brief, crushing hug. She’s strong, stronger than Fitz, and Jemma really hasn’t gotten hugs from people other than Fitz in a while (and even that’s not that common of an occurrence), so it almost knocks Jemma off of her feet.

“Oh!” Jemma says. “Um.”

“You could hug me back,” Skye says into the crook of Jemma’s neck. Her lips, brushing up against Jemma’s skin, are chapped.

Jemma hugs her back. Jemma puts her arms around this compact thing of newly-made muscle and heart, runs her hands up the mountain-range ridges of her spine and feels a thrill at the shiver that runs through Skye’s body at Jemma’s fingertips against her skin and bones.

When Skye extracts herself, she’s still shaking. Jemma squeezes her hand, tries to steady her. Tries to let her know she’ll never let Skye fall through the cracks in the ground the sheer force of her can make.

“You wanna come grab something to eat with me?” Skye asks, jerking her thumb towards the vending machine. “Or are you—”

“Yeah,” Jemma says.

Skye nods, understanding implicitly. “Give Fitz my love, then,” she tells Jemma, and wanders off in search of two-dollar candy bars and shaken-up cans of soda.

Jemma pulls out her hair tie and shakes out her hair. She has the beginning of a headache pressing its way against her temples (from sleep deprivation and stress and the tension of having her hair pulled back), but she’ll look disheveled if she keeps her hair down, so she rakes her fingers through it a few times and smooths it back into a ponytail that rests in the middle of her head. She splits it in two and tugs to tighten, then heads over to where Fitz is leaning against the fence separating the pool area of the motel from the city surrounding it.

She stops a few feet away from him and clasps her hands behind her back. The night air is still, its stagnancy tugging on the space between them. She says, “Hey.”  
He’s already looking at her, of course; Jemma doesn’t think he’s stopped looking at her since he exited the motel and made his way outside. “Hey,” he says, and then, “Jemma, how are you?”

She motions towards the pool with her head. “Want to sit?” she says.

Fitz pushes off of the fence and slips his hand into hers. It’s less a gesture of intimacy and more a way to tug her towards the pool with him, but Jemma indulges, for a second, in the idea that there’s no reason that they’re touching save for a desire to be close to each other.

Jemma drops his hand to slip off her shoes after walking for the three seconds it takes to get to the edge of the pool. She rolls her pant legs up neatly, folding the fabric over itself, putting as much order as she can into the mundane. She thinks that maybe if she pretends hard enough, she can make herself believe that she still has control over at least one small thing that goes on in her life. She can roll up her pant legs with purpose. She can do it the way she wants. And she’s being absurd, she realizes, but it’s an absurdity that calms her and makes it so that she doesn’t have to force anyone else to deal with the anxiety coursing through her, so it’s an absurdity that she welcomes.

Fitz is already kicking his feet back and forth in the water. Though his socks sit in a pile next to him, his shoes aren’t around, so Jemma assumes that that’s why he disappeared into the motel. Her suspicions are confirmed when he says, “I left my shoes inside. The rooms are, ah. Well, I’ve certainly stayed in much worse?”

“Why were you wandering out by the fence barefoot?”

“I was waiting for you,” he tells her. The moonlight reflects off of the pool and into his eyes. “Didn’t want to sit at the pool alone, you know. It’d make me look like a loser.”

“Fitz,” Jemma says. She sits down next to him and slides her feet into the too-cold pool. The shock of it, along with the feeling of a step underneath her toes, grounds her. She nudges Fitz’s ankle with her ankle. “No offense, but it isn’t really the coolest of looks to wander out by the fence barefoot, either.”

“I was standing,” Fitz says defensively. “Aloofly, I mean. That’s cool, isn’t it?”

Jemma almost laughs, but before she can manage to do so, Fitz sighs and, changing the tone of the conversation entirely, says, “I can’t stop thinking about– well, you know. Christ.”

“Mmm,” Jemma agrees.

“Must be some reason why Ward did it. Maybe they brainwashed him.”

“Don’t know,” Jemma replies, resting against the handrail attached to the pool steps. “Some people are just evil.”

Fitz shifts, putting his hands behind himself. “Well, I’d rather not believe that.”

“It’s true!” Jemma insists, because it is. Some people are good, and some people are bad. There’s an order to the world, rules that codify it, and of course there’s always going to be some gray area—goodness knows she occupies it some days; goodness knows Skye does, too, and she never faults her for that—but issues like this are cut and dry. HYDRA is evil. Ward is evil. A good man wouldn’t have gotten involved with an organization like that, no matter the level of “brainwashing” he might have gone through. And then, because Jemma really did like Ward, because Skye kissed Ward, because Jemma’s still thinking about the curve of Skye’s throat as she shouted _betrayal sucks!_ at the stars, Jemma admits, “I just assumed we’d be better at spotting it.”

Fitz takes in a shaky breath. Jemma’s watching him in her periphery, and he’s watching her in his periphery, and neither one of them are allowing themselves to look at the other. He says, “Tell me that you’re not HYDRA.”

Jemma raises an eyebrow and snaps her head towards him. “What?”

He looks at her, too, and whatever tension has been between them is shattered. She can see that he trusts her. She can see that he is so, so afraid. He says, “I know that it’s ridiculous, but I just need to hear you say it.”

And Jemma indulges him, as she always will. She leans forward, and she smiles, and it’s a real smile. It’s not the sort of smile she puts on for company, and it’s not the sort of smile she whips out to reassure everyone that she has things under control even when it isn’t. She wouldn’t bullshit him at a time like this. “I’m not HYDRA,” she says.

“Yeah, good. Good,” he’s quick to say. She feels warmth spread between her fingertips, thread between her ribs, bleed out of her heart. “And I– ‘cuz I’m not, either,” he adds, as if she even for a millisecond thought that Fitz, who is both Jewish and a very good man, could ever work for Nazis. It’s nice to know that he wants to reciprocate, though. It’s nice to know that he wants to do all that he can to make her feel okay.

“Of course not.”

“Yeah,” Fitz says, and in the pause, Jemma pulls back into herself and looks across the glittering pool to the other side of the space they’re trapped in. Fitz continues, “Because if– if you ever did…”

Jemma turns to him. “I wouldn’t,” she tells him firmly before he can say _leave me, betray_ _me, turn away from the years we have and the years that are yet to come_.

“... I wouldn’t know what to do,” Fitz admits.

“You’ll never have to find out,” Jemma promises. She puts her hand on his knee, rubbing her thumb over the bony surface, paying forward the love that Skye pressed from her own thumb into Jemma’s own skeleton. 

She can’t look at Fitz for long, because he’s making the sort of face that gets her a little choked up, and she has to be strong. She looks back across the pool and rests her head in her free hand and feels comforted by Fitz’s presence next to her and hopes that she’s providing the same reassuring sense of stability.

They sit in silence for a bit. Jemma keeps her hand on Fitz’s knee, feeling it rotate underneath her as he kicks his legs around. He’s not great at sitting still, and she loves him too much to really care about the chlorine he’s splashing onto her pants.

The nice thing about Fitz is that Jemma never forgets he’s there, but when she needs him to, he can fade into the background. His presence is the sort of white noise that helps her drift into a dreamless sleep. So she sits next to him and feels better for it, and they don’t need to talk, because they’ve talked enough for a hundred lifetimes over their ten years of friendship. They sit and make each other’s heart rates slow down a bit, make each other’s minds race a touch less. They’re the type of people who have a difficult time pausing, but Jemma’s hand on Fitz’s knee causes the world around them to stop rotating, if only for a minute.

Jemma watches Skye as she types away on a computer that she’s procured from somewhere (honestly, the amount of devices that Skye has on or near her at any given moment is almost comical. It’d be like Jemma carrying a set of test tubes around with her. Which, okay, she’s done before. On multiple occasions.) It’s a bit magical to look at. She can only see the back of Skye’s head, and Skye’s shoulders, comfortably broad, are blocking most of her screen. Still, her arms twitch with the speed of her fingers flying over the keyboard, and one of her legs bounces up and down in a way that indicates concentration the same way it does in Fitz.

Next to her, Fitz is spinning patterns into the surface of the water with the rotational force of his legs. Jemma thinks, distantly, of a time when they were seventeen and still at the start of the most important friendship she’s ever had or ever will have, and Fitz was telling her about torque. She doesn’t know why it came up, and she doesn’t know what the conversation led to. But she can remember sitting on Fitz’s bed and wearing Fitz’s hoodie and watching Fitz’s face light up as he rambled on about some basic principle of physics or another, listening to the thick _ck_ sound at the end of _torque_ and the way it fell off of his tongue, feeling his blankets underneath her bitten-down fingernails, thinking that maybe this was the sort of thing that was supposed to last forever. Maybe this moment was one that would never end. Maybe he’d spin his hands around, demonstrating orbital angular velocity, and he’d bring her with her, and they’d make their own impenetrable rotational field, or whatever it was that he was telling her about. There’s something out there, probably, that has a stronger gravitational pull than the earth. Jemma thinks, now, that she could find it with him.

A hand on her shoulder nearly makes her jump. It’s Triplett, and he’s smiling and holding a bag of crisps. “Want one?” he offers.

Jemma flicks her eyes back towards the other side of the pool where Skye is talking with Coulson, who has egressed the motel. Then she glances back at Fitz, who is apparently too preoccupied with helping himself to Triplett’s crisps to be as uncharacteristically snippy as he often tends to be around Triplett. She says, “Sure thing,” and takes a few.

“I’m going to my mom’s place,” he says, one hand in his jacket in that casual sort of way that only people like him and Skye can pull off. Jemma knows she’d look like a wax figure with a dislocated shoulder if she were to stand like that. “She’s got some tech that I need to pick up. I’m gonna be staying there, so I just wanted to come over and say goodnight to you guys before I left.”

Jemma nods. “Thank you. I hope she’s doing well.”

“Yeah, she’s good,” he says. “Haven’t seen her in long enough, so this should be nice. Besides, I’m kinda counting my blessing that we’re all alive right now, so this is adding to that. In a good way, I mean.”

“I can imagine,” Jemma says. Something in the back of her mind yells at her that _you’re a bad daughter for not contacting your parents about everything that’s going on right now_ , but something louder tells her that _you don’t need to make them worry, and you don’t need to put them in needless danger by connecting yourself to them, even if it’s over presumably secure lines. It’s important that they stay safe, and if they spend a few days worrying that you’ve been working for a terrorist Nazi organization, you can deal with the judgment they might be imparting on you._

“That’s good of you,” Fitz tells Triplett.

“Thanks, man,” he responds. He leans down to pat Fitz on the back, and while he’s crouching, he gives Jemma a brief but affectionate side hug. When he straightens up, he says, “I should get going, then,” and walks towards the exit without a glance back.

He looks so effortlessly okay. Jemma wishes she could be like that. She’s felt so out of her element with all the drama and chaos and fighting going on around her. So much of her is still that sixteen-year-old girl with a love of science and humanity who wants to better her future and the futures of everyone around her. And now, she is in way, way too deep, and attempting with all her might to not let it show.

She’s doing a commendable job, she thinks. Besides, it’s not as if she can back out at this point. It’s not as if she wants to. 

Fitz rests his head on her shoulder, his legs still kicking aimlessly through the water. “Can’t believe we almost died,” he says.

“When?”

“Good question,” he says. “Too many times to count. You know, this isn’t what I signed up for.”

Jemma tips her head to the side so that it’s resting on top of his. “Yeah. Me neither.”

They lapse into silence again. The night is still, broken only by the distant sounds of Coulson and Skye talking and the sound of Skye’s nails tapping against the table she’s sitting at. And by the sounds of Fitz’s breathing, Jemma’s breathing, the two of them taking in air and letting it out and letting the world know they’ve managed to stay alive. They’ve almost died, yes, but they haven’t let themselves go out just yet. It’s impressive, Jemma thinks, for two people who aren’t even cleared for combat.

Jemma wishes she had something to say. She often feels as if she’s a step behind in conversation, and even though it’s much easier with Fitz, it’s still never perfect. He’s not the type to want to exist in silence, and though she knows he’d be speaking if he wanted to be speaking, she still worries that she’s doing something wrong. She tries to push that feeling down, though, and focus on being as present as she can be. She is, quite literally, a shoulder for Fitz to lean on. She needs to keep that shoulder steady.

At some point, Coulson goes inside. Skye tucks her laptop under her arm and comes over to where Fitz-Simmons are sitting. As Skye approaches, Fitz straightens up. Jemma keeps her hand on his knee.

Skye pushes her hair up and over her head in a rakish sort of way, the moon hitting her face and spotlighting her against the kitschy, overly-fake-looking backdrop of the motel. “I’m headed inside,” she says. “We’re in the same room, yeah?”

Fitz-Simmons nod their assent. Fitz says, “You can take the bed that’s closer to the door. Jemma likes to sleep farther away from it,” at the same time as Simmons says, “I’d prefer if you slept in the bed closer to the door, if it’s no trouble for you.”

“What about you?” Skye asks, inclining her head towards Fitz.

“Oh, I’ll just sleep on the floor,” he says, as if this is the most obvious thing in the world, which it clearly was not, because both Skye and Jemma make sounds of protest. “I’m not about to snatch a cot away from either of you ladies, of course.”

“I can totally take the floor,” Skye assures him. “I promise you, I’ve slept in way tougher places. Formerly homeless, remember? And currently homeless, too, technically. We all are.”

“Yeah, formerly homeless, so you shouldn’t _have_ to sleep on the floor when you have a chance not to,” Fitz argues.

He seems pretty adamant about it, so Jemma tells Skye, “Let him have this. It’s not often that he gets to feel chivalrous.”

“I take umbrage at that, but alright,” Fitz says.

“Men,” Jemma says, rolling her eyes fondly

Skye laughs. “Okay. Bed that’s closer to the door. Got it. Also, Coulson told me that the bathroom locks were kind of shitty, so if the door to the bathroom is closed, don’t open it, even if it’s not locked. I gotta go take a shower. Wanna bet on if there’s body wash or shampoo or whatever at this place?”

“Do I?” Jemma asks, and at the same time, Fitz says, “Not particularly, no, I don’t.”

“Yeah, probably not,” Skye agrees. “Well, a low-water-pressure downpour of lukewarm water is better than nothing. See you guys later tonight. Don’t get arrested for terrorism or shot by Nazis while I’m gone, alright?”

“We’ll try our hardest,” Fitz assures her with more sincerity than is really necessary.

When Skye goes inside, she closes the door behind her with a firm _click_ that reverberates through the night.

Jemma takes a deep breath. Holds it. Lets it out through the nose and makes sure her back is straight as she does so. “Fitz,” she says, “are you—”

“I want to go in,” Fitz says, voice quiet. And then he says it louder: “I want to go in.”

“In– inside? Okay, we should probably be getting to sleep soon anyway, so—”

“The pool, I mean,” he amends, almost laughing as he says it. “Is that ridiculous?”

“A bit,” Jemma says honestly. “Have you got swim trunks?”

“No, but I have boxers, which are not even a little bit close enough, but the world has been turned inside out and upside down, so I think the universe will forgive me for swimming in my pants.”

“I think the universe likely doesn’t care what you swim in, as long as it’s not the nude. And even then the higher authority that you’d be answering to would be simply law enforcement.”

Fitz hesitates for a second before tugging off his sweater. He’s wearing a rumpled button-up underneath, and he makes it three buttons before throwing his hands down and saying, “This is stupid.”

“A bit,” Jemma repeats. “Seems fun, though.”

“Seems a decent way to catch hypothermia.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, you’re the biologist, so—”

Jemma tackles him before he can finish his sentence. She makes sure to push him away from the stairs (they don’t need to run from death just to meet their end at the corner of a step leading into a motel swimming pool), and the two of them fall against the surface with a splash of chlorinated water that hits Jemma’s nose at the same time as tears hit the back of her throat.

She doesn’t cry. It’s hard to cry underwater, though she’s sure it’s possible. She doesn’t cry. She holds her breath while Fitz rockets up to take in air, and she opens her eyes against the chemical sting. Her jacket—fuck, she’s probably completely ruined her jacket, this is why she avoids spontaneity at all costs—billows around her, a sheet of darkness. She takes out her ponytail and lets her hair float around her face, lets it cover her, lets it run free. 

As Jemma drifts up, weightless, she thinks that this is exactly the opposite of falling. The last time she felt entirely out of control of her body’s movement was when she was hurtling at near-terminal velocity towards the earth. This is, objectively, a better feeling. This time, she’s flying up towards Fitz instead of spinning away from him.

She breaks the surface with a gasp and a scream of laughter, because Fitz looks a bit like a drowned rat when his hair is soaked.

“You’re a– I’m not going to call you a bitch,” Fitz says between the noises he’s making that seem appropriately reactionary to a shock of both cold water and a friend’s laughter to the system. “I’m not going to call you that, but—”

“But you’re thinking it,” Jemma says, her voice sparking against his like fire leaping from a match onto a candlewick. “Entirely valid of you.”

Fitz dunks down again. When he comes up, he comes up with force, throwing himself and the water around him at Jemma. The water hits her first, smacking her in the face and likely washing away whatever makeup her initial fall didn’t clear off, and then Fitz hits her, his body crashing on top of hers and toppling her over.

They twist and turn together under the water for a bit, and when they resurface, legs bent so that the water is up to almost their necks, Jemma is clutching Fitz’s arms and Fitz is clutching Jemma’s waist. They’re holding onto each other like buoys in the middle of a deadly sea, like two people holding onto the last thing that they know is theirs. They’re holding onto each other the same way they always have.

“We should,” Jemma starts, her face dangerously close to her best friend’s. She swallows, tasting chlorine and tension under her tongue. “We should go inside, I think. I may have misjudged our probability of catching hypothermia. It may be markedly higher than I had previously estimated.”

Fitz’s fingers flex against Jemma’s side, and she shivers from the current of cold water it sends up the back of her blouse. “Inside,” he echoes. “Yes.”

For a second, neither of them move. For less than a second, Jemma harbors some delusion—fantasy?—that one of them might move forward, might close the distance between them. For a second, a second that feels shockingly infinite, anything seems possible.

The second passes, though, and Fitz pulls himself up to his full standing height, water dripping off of his shoulders and his half-unbuttoned shirt clinging to his body. He frowns at it, announces, “I hate wet fabric,” and fumbles for his buttons.

He’s not having much success, so Jemma stands up (and tries to ignore the awful feeling of her wet shirt sticking to her stomach) and says, “Let me.”

Fitz clasps his hands behind his back and directs his gaze up towards the sky as Jemma makes short work of his buttons. When she’s done, she peels his shirt off of him and wrings out some water back into the pool before handing it back to him.

He scratches at one of the scars on his chest, still not looking her in the eye. “Thanks,” he says.

She pats him gingerly on the shoulder, hyperaware of the way her own shirt is plastered against the contours of her body. She’s thankful it’s black and not at all see-through. “Any time. Let’s get showered up, shall we?”

Jemma grabs her shoes and experiences all nine circles of hell as she walks to the motel room she’s staying in. Few things in the world make her want to die the way the feeling of wet cloth against her skin does. Still, it was worth it to see Fitz smile.

“You have a key, right?” Fitz asks. “I left mine in the room.”

“I do,” Jemma confirms, holding up her shoes. Her room key is pressed to the sole of one with her finger. “Damn, do you think Skye’s going to be using the bathroom?”

“I hope not,” Fitz sighs. “You can shower first, by the way. You have more hair, so.”

It’s flimsy logic, but Jemma is way too ready to get out of her wet clothes to argue with him. And the bathroom door, thankfully, is open, so Jemma heads into it the second they get inside.

As she takes off her clothes, she can hear Fitz and Skye—who was lounging across the bed closer to the door, thankfully; Jemma is particular about this sort of thing, and she’s flattered that Fitz remembers that about her—chattering about something or other. She can’t make out the words, but she can hear the rise and fall of their voices. It’s a good sound.

The shower is, as Skye predicted, not great. There are small (and terrible) bottles of shampoo and body wash, though, thankfully. 

At some point during her shower, the door cracks open, and she panics on principle for a second before she realizes there exists a curtain hanging in front of the shower and hiding her from anyone’s eyes.

Fitz’s voice says, “Hiya, Jemma, sorry to interrupt. You forgot clothes, though, and a towel to boot, so.”

“Thank you!” Jemma calls back, voice tight. “Now please leave!”

She hears the door close halfway through _leave_.

Fitz has brought her one of the worst towels she’s ever encountered (par for the course for the motel), a pair of sweatpants, and an old S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy t-shirt that very well might be his considering how frequently they wear each others’ Academy apparel. Being about the same size has its benefits. She changes quickly, not wanting to keep him drenching the floor of the room with chemical-laden water.

“So,” Skye says when Jemma and Fitz have swapped rooms. The sound of the shower plays comfortably in the background as Jemma gets her things in order. “You and Fitz were having some fun in the pool, it seems.”

Instead of an answer to this very leading question, Jemma’s brain helpfully supplies her with chemistry exam study tips from when she was sixteen. _Liquid chlorine_ , it tells her, _typically contains 12-16% available chlorine. In contrast, household bleach typically contains around 5% available chlorine._

“Um,” Jemma says. “Yes?”

“How was your… shirtless swim?”

 _When chlorine (in any form) is added to water, a weak acid called Hypochlorous acid is produced. It is this acid,_ not _the chlorine, which gives water its ability to oxidize and disinfect._ “It wasn’t shirtless. Quite the opposite. Shirtful, one might say. Fitz took off his shirt afterward because he didn’t want to be wearing wet, chemical-soaked garments.” 

“Oh,” Skye says. “Well, that makes sense.” She types at her computer, frowns a bit, and then types some more until her frown shifts into a smile. She looks up and gestures at her chest area. “Is he, like, okay?”

“Beg pardon? Oh, ah. The scars, yes. He had a surgery a handful of years back,” Jemma says, her tone of voice indicating that they’re leaving that at that. “And, yes,” she adds, her voice softening, “I suppose we did have fun in the pool.”

“That’s good,” Skye says semi-cryptically. 

Something on her screen flashes, illuminating her cheekbones and her dark eyes with a brilliant green light. She groans and hits the side of her computer. “Percussive maintenance,” she explains to Jemma. “Usually helps out. Though, not this time, I guess. Fuck this motel and its shitty WiFi.”

“Sorry,” Jemma says uselessly. She hates not being able to help.

“Totally fine, don’t worry,” Skye says. “I’m gonna slip outside again, actually. Got more bars out there. I’ll be back around—” she checks the watch strapped to her wrist “—half past midnight? One, one thirty? I think? If I’m timing this right.”

“Sounds good,” Jemma nods. “Don’t stay out too late, though. We really should all get some rest.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Skye says. “I’m pretty much more functional on four hours of sleep than I am on nine.”

And with that borderline upsetting attempt at reassurance out of the way, Skye disappears again, leaving Jemma alone in a room with a few bags and the sound of Fitz’s shower’s water pressure lessening by the second.

Fitz emerges when Jemma is midway through reorganizing the contents of his bag. She apologizes instinctively as he walks up behind her.

“I don’t mind,” he says. “It’s not as if there’s anything in there you haven’t seen. Or worn, even.”

She finishes folding a shirt of his and pats it once she sets it down atop the small pile of shirts of his that she’s already folded. “The shower was quite shit, wasn’t it?”

“Quite shit,” Fitz agrees. “I’m glad you pushed me into the pool, though, even if it means I’ll be scrubbing at my dry, chlorine-decimated scalp for days.”

 _Chloramines give off a strong chlorine odor and are irritating to the eyes. The presence of these two conditions leads many people to believe that there is too much chlorine in the water; actually, just the opposite is true._ Jemma wills herself to not react to the charming way Fitz’s eyes crinkle when he’s happy as she says, “I’m glad you had a good time.” 

“A wonderful one,” Fitz agrees. He starts to smile, but halfway through, it turns into a yawn. “I’m tired,” he says, stating the obvious. “Where did Skye run off to?”

“Outside. The service in here isn’t good enough for whatever it is she needs to be doing right now, apparently. She’ll be back in a couple of hours, but she didn’t give me the impression that she wanted us to wait up for her, or anything.”

“Do you think she’ll be safe?” Fitz asks, concerned. Jemma has spent many an hour talking with him about Skye, and aside from the fact that Fitz seems to have a low-grade crush on her (that he does not expect to lead to anything), he really admires her and cares about her. He’s said that she’s smart and she’s capable and she’s a little bit terrifying. The type of person the two of them would admire from afar at the Academy. The type of person the two of them are glad to be friends with, glad to be something a step off from family with, glad to exist alongside.

“I think she’ll be alright,” Jemma says. “I don’t doubt that Coulson—or, if Coulson’s right, May, once she arrives here—will go and check on her.”

“You think May would?”

“I think May would,” Jemma says. “Quiet doesn’t mean uncaring. She doesn’t have the fatherly effect to her that Coulson does, of course, but she’s not at all uncaring.”

“Coulson does act a bit Dad-ish, doesn’t he?”

“To Skye especially,” Jemma agrees, nodding. She sits on the edge of her bed and plays with the comforter. “You don’t have to sleep on the floor, you know.”

He looks at her quizzically. He’s wearing a vintage-style _Star Wars_ shirt that’s about the same blue as his eyes. “Well, I’m not letting _you_ sleep on the floor, Simmons.”

“No, I know. You– you could sleep with me. Not– I mean– with me in, you know, _that_ sort of way. In the– just, you and I could—”

“—share a bed, yes,” Fitz says. “Are you sure?”

“Very,” she says definitively. It’s not as if they’ve never shared a bed before. And she isn’t about to admit it, but Jemma thinks she just sort of needs to be held tonight. She needs some surety, and Skye’s hug, wonderful as it was, isn’t going to be enough to keep her steady.

“Okay,” Fitz says. “I mean, I don’t want to be encroaching upon your space, so—”

She puts a hand on his shoulder to shut him up. It works remarkably well; he falls silent with a small, sharp exhale. 

“Fitz,” Jemma says, “I promise you that you could never encroach. Let’s just wash up and try and get a decent amount of rest, shall we?”

“We shall,” he agrees. He splits off to find his toothbrush—maybe Jemma shouldn’t have unpacked his things without his supervision, because now he’s making a mess out of the organization Jemma so carefully curated—and Jemma busies herself with brushing her hair in the bathroom mirror.

It’s soothing. She counts her strokes, onetwothreefourfive, the bristles of her brush cutting cleanly through her hair and turning the whole half-dry, towel-tangled mess into a smooth curtain that brushes against her collarbone where her t-shirt slides down her shoulder. She brushes through each section the same amount of times, brushes through what her brain has deemed a proper number of sections, and once the whole ritual is done, she feels… not _better_ , really, because there’s still a tight ball of anxiety wound up in her stomach, but she feels as if she’s conquered something. Something as small as brushing her hair the correct way. It’s an absurd thing to find solace in, but it helps pack up the contents of the tiny, overstuffed closet of nerves that exists in her brain a little bit tighter, so she supposes it helps in the short run.

Fitz appears over her shoulder, toothbrush and toothpaste in hand. She steps to the side to make room, and he brushes his arm—intentionally, it seems—against hers as he situates himself in front of the sink.

They wash up for bed together. Jemma has a nighttime routine (shower, change, brush out hair, brush teeth, wash face, check to make sure alarms for waking up in the morning and taking hormones and medication are turned on, go to bed), and Fitz does, too, though his is markedly less high-maintenance than hers, a difference she chalks up to him refusing to deal with his hair ever and also her being slightly obsessive about skincare (it was, in young Jemma’s mind, a ‘girly’ thing to do, so she started doing—overdoing, really—it, and she simply didn’t stop).

Despite the fact that Jemma doesn’t always love being watched while she gets things done, she doesn’t mind the fact that Fitz, once he’s done getting ready, sits on the edge of her bed and looks at her while she finishes up. She wasn’t lying when she said he really never could encroach. It’s a comfort to know that he’s here with her.

“You could have gotten under the covers,” Jemma calls over her shoulder to him, flicking the light switch out. She prays that Skye doesn’t turn them on when coming back in later in the night. Jemma is a light enough sleeper that she would certainly be disrupted. 

“I know,” Fitz says. “I just wanted to give you one last chance to change your mind.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Jemma informs him as she climbs into bed.

“I know,” he repeats. He follows suit, though, and his head hits the pillow with a soft _oof_. “Well. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she says.

They lie next to each other, stiff as boards, and stare up at the ceiling. Or, that’s what Jemma assumes Fitz is doing, at least. It’s certainly what she’s doing. And she wants, just a little bit, to die.

After a few minutes, Jemma thinks, _this is absurd_ , and shifts into a better position to fall asleep in. Tensions are high, and everything has gone to shit, and she’s not about to let things be awkward with her best friend just because they happen to be in the same bed. They’ve done this before. It’s nothing new, and it’s nothing weird.

Fitz must have been waiting for her, because the second she starts to move, he does, too. It takes a second, but soon enough they’ve curled up into their own comfortable shapes. Fitz is lying on his side, fetal-style, his back towards Jemma. She’s on her stomach, one arm tucked under her head and the other inches away from the back of Fitz’s neck. Her knee fits itself into the bend of his legs, and he kicks her lightly, not to move her away, but in a politely happy acknowledgment of their closeness.

Jemma tells herself she is not going to stress. She is going to count sheep. She is going to go to bed.

She closes her eyes and instantly starts to spiral.

She’s gone through a lot in the past few days. It’s been difficult, and it’s been scary, and she kind of wants to cry, but she can’t do that with Fitz next to her. She kind of wants to punch something, but she’d likely just end up breaking her own hand. She kind of wants the world to stop, but even a duo of scientists as sharp as Fitz-Simmons haven’t come up with a way to bend time yet, so her dreams of harnessing chronomancy (science, not magic, whatever) to give herself a measure of time to have a mild panic attack in are just dreams.

Just when she’s thinking that she might have to dip into the bathroom to break down in privacy, a small sound comes from the other side of the bed. It’s so faint that it takes her a second to realize it’s Fitz saying her name.

“Mmm?” she responds intelligently.

She feels the mattress underneath her bend a bit as he takes in a deep breath and readjusts his position. “I have something to tell you,” he says.

“Alright. Would you like to look at me, or—”

“No,” he says quickly. “I don’t– I’m not so sure how I feel about it, and– well. I– ah. Don’t particularly wish to see the way you look at me when I tell you.”

Jemma’s chest tightens in extreme fear. “Fitz?”

“I killed someone,” he says, and for a second, the only thing Jemma can think, so very selfishly, is _well, that is, at least, likely nowhere near as bad as the revelations Skye was forced to have about her beloved boy._

“Oh,” she says. She’s happy that he isn’t looking at her, too. She doesn’t know what’s written out across her face, and she doesn’t have the energy within her to school it. Slowly, carefully, calmly, because Fitz is clearly freaking out and because she does not need to exacerbate the situation, she says, “Would you care to elaborate? You don’t need to. We can leave it at that, or—”

“It was to protect May.” The words leap out of him like water spraying out of a shallow and full bowl. “It was– back when we, um. The– the fight in the Hub. When we were split up. Right before we handed Garrett off to Ward, which, I mean, was obviously a mistake in retrospect, and—”

“Fitz,” Jemma says, and that’s all she says. Just his name, quiet and steady, and he recomposes himself.

“Right.” He swallows audibly. “Right. Well, a gun fell in front of me, and May was in trouble, and I– well, I shot someone.”

“A HYDRA agent?”

“Yes, and I know that that’s the enemy, but Jemma, I still killed a person.”

She closes her eyes and breathes out slowly through her nose. When she opens them again, she says, “You didn’t. You killed a man working for a Nazi organization. Nazis are not people the way we are people.”

“I know,” Fitz says again, a bit harsher this time.

“Fitz, you did the world a service by ridding—”

“I know! I know, I know, I know. I can know it and still feel– I don’t know, Jemma,” he says, and the sudden drop from ire to exhaustion in his voice tugs at something deep in Jemma’s gut. “I don’t know. I still shot someone in the– the back, I think, or the head, maybe. I don’t– I signed up for this to help people,” he says. “We make non-lethal tranq guns and call them stupid names. You patch up people; I patch up the Bus. We have each others’ backs. We do good. We don’t do harm. We do good. That’s what I want, at least.”

“You did do good,” she assures him. She shifts closer to him, putting a hand on his back and moving it in small circles. He leans into her touch. Every part of him is tense. Every part of him feels like it might break in two at any second. “You said you were saving May, weren’t you? And you were lessening the manpower of HYDRA. That’s two instances of goodness in one go.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just didn’t realize that I’d have to kill to do good. I mean, I’m not opposed to others doing it, so it’s not an issue of that. If it was an issue of that I wouldn’t be here in the first place. I just guess I never really thought that _I_ would have to be the one pulling the trigger,” he says. “Jemma, I’m amazed I even managed to lift the gun without dropping it and accidentally killing myself.”

She laughs quietly. “That wouldn’t have been the most optimal of situations.”

“It wouldn’t have been,” he agrees.

“And I understand,” she says, even though she doesn’t, not really. She’s never killed anyone. She prays she never needs to. She’s impressed he’s handling this as well as he is, and then she thinks that maybe he’s been doing what she does. Packing it all away and waiting for it to explode later. This is him bubbling over. This is him cracking. This is him showing his insides to Jemma and trusting that she’ll still stay by his side after she’s seen how tangled-up and messy those insides are.

She will, of course. She always will.

“You are wonderful,” she tells him, and then, because it never hurts for him to hear it, she adds, “and I love you. And I’m proud of you for saving May.”

Fitz turns towards her. His eyes are closed; he must still not want to see the way she’s looking at him. There isn’t much light in the room, so he exists more as a group of tightly-packed lines and shadows, a too-small mass that has curled up around itself. “I don’t want to do it again,” he says, voice small.

“I’ll do it for you, if the time comes,” Jemma promises. She doesn’t think she’s lying. She can’t say for sure, but she doesn’t think she is.

“Oh, I would not want you to have to deal with the things I’m feeling,” Fitz says through shaky laughter. “Logically, I know that it’s alright. Logically, I know I made the world a better place.”

“Logic is good,” Jemma says. “You’d never be able to build something functional if you didn’t operate on logic.”

“Building things and taking them apart are different.”

“Not so much,” Jemma argues. “You’re talented at both. And sometimes you must disassemble a device because maybe it’s faulty, or maybe it could hurt someone, or—”

“Could we drop the metaphor?”

“Of course,” Jemma says. “What I’m trying to say is that you did do good. As much as you feel bad right now, I pray you leave your guilt behind. You needn’t hold onto any of it. You needn’t have any in the first place, but that is not something I can control, nor is it something you can, to a certain extent. And, of course,” she finishes, “I’m here for you always.”

“Everything is changing,” Fitz says, vaguely and with a sigh.

But Jemma gets it. “Everything is changing,” she agrees. She moves to be on her side, mirroring Fitz’s position and pressing her forehead to his. “We’re still the same, though. You know? We’re still the same.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I feel– it feels a bit stupid to say that I feel better now, doesn’t it? Better is an inappropriately tiny word.”

“I don’t think so,” Jemma says thoughtfully. She puts her arm around him, drawing him just a bit closer to her. “Better is important. I’m proud of you and of what you did, and I’m glad that you told me. And I understand that you understand that it was good of you to have protected May, and I also understand that you’re shaken up. I wish I had words of stronger reassurance; I wish I knew the right thing to say. If you ever want to talk about it more, though, you know where to find me.”

“I always will,” he says.

Jemma takes a moment to assess how she’s feeling. She does not think any less of Fitz now. In fact, she thinks more highly of him, probably, because he was brave, and because he’s taking the time to talk about things with her, and honestly because he killed a Nazi.

Though neither of them is saying anything, the room is not silent. The room is stuffed full with love and the sounds of steady breathing.

Jemma thinks about earlier in the night. About how when Skye shouted at the stars and held Jemma in her arms, Jemma felt like she could feel the entire universe inside of her chest. And if Skye is the universe, boundless and ever-expanding and able to make Jemma feel so breathlessly part of something that is pushing her forward, then Fitz is Jemma’s own little hole in it. An enclave of safety and honesty and something entirely her own. Skye is the world and all it can give; Fitz is home in a person, her rock, her constant. 

Jemma feels her home-in-a-person rise and fall slightly beneath her arm. If she concentrates very hard, she thinks she can feel his pulse. And, despite everything that has happened in the past few days, Jemma, lying in a small bed in a small room curled around the person who means the most to her, somehow manages to drift off to a peaceful sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry not sorry for pushing the trans fitzsimmons + jewish fitz agenda i am trans and jewish let me have this. (skye is also trans she just hasn't figured it out yet it's okay give her time she'll discover being nonbinary soon.) Also i feel like i have to say i fully support killing nazis fitz's guilt is not representative of my own feelings. also sorry for harping on fitz's lowkey possessiveness re: jemma's obliviousness abt triplett (who, like, idk if he shows up in any later seasons so if everyone forgot who he is sorry <3 i have only seen s1) i just think its funny when short men are like that (im 4 inches shorter than fitz. Im short men. whatever.)
> 
> anyway this was LONG so like thank you to the three people who end up reading it for sticking it all the way thru. 
> 
> come find me on twitter @ kickdshins, and, as always, kudos/comments are greatly appreciated <3 thank you!


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